


Fortitudo

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 16:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8169121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: After Maedhros is brought back to them, and the Silmarils are returned too, the Sons of Fëanor try to make sense of what's happening.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after [Destrudo](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3524390), where Fëanor's fëa goes to the Silmarils after he dies and he wreaks havoc in Angband. The story should be much longer, but I've run out of inspiration and since I've had this bit lying in my draft for quite a while I decided to post it for the time being. I can't make any promises for the continuation.

“...he told me the light bade him do it,” Celegorm said, somewhat haltingly, closely observing the wolf who had only a few hours before returned the Silmarils to them.

Carcharoth now played with Huan on the pebbles of the lakeside, jumping and barking, seemingly carefree, seemingly innocently.

Curufin still held the three gems in his hands, squeezing them tightly to his chest. They were the genuine ones, he was sure of it. Maglor had said it could be a deception, but Maglor hadn't held them. When Curufin stared at them while thinking of his father, the light seeping through his fingers seemed even brighter. 

Besides, neither Morgoth nor anybody else in Angband had the ability or means to produce something to replicate the Silmarils so precisely, and judging by the wolf's appearance, they hadn't been surrendered willingly. Even in the lamp-lit darkness the gore still clinging to Carcharoth's maw stood out clearly against his white coat. 

Carcharoth had spat the Silmarils at Curufin's feet, then simply lain down on his side, with a rumbling sound that made all bystanders, already filled with terror and astonishment at his stealthy arrival, start. 

The twins would have wanted to slay the wolf, but Celegorm had stopped them, claiming that he sensed no hostility from him. Celegorm relied on his instinct, or his intimate knowledge of beasts, and most of all on the fact that Huan showed no sign of alarm. If his instinct could fail, Huan's couldn't. 

To prove his point he had crouched down near Carcharoth's huge muzzle – large enough to chew his head and shoulders off with a single bite – and started whispering to him, in the same language he had used in Aman with the wolves that roamed the wilderness there. Carcharoth's light amber eyes had twinkled with understanding, and the wolf had started wagging his tail in happiness, like any other canine would have. 

“The light made him do it?” Curufin asked sceptically, readjusting his grip on the Silmarils, hardly caring that his fingers were cramped.

“Well, I guess the Silmarils wouldn't appreciate being in Morgoth's hold, would they?” Celegorm said, trying to force his tone to be light. It came out strident, stunted.

“The Silmarils aren't sentient creatures.”

“But they aren't wholly inanimate, either,” Celegorm mumbled, lowering his gaze, because it still hurt too much to talk of their father while looking at Curufin's face. “They danced in father's hands.”

Curufin wasn't hurt by his brother's averted gaze. He couldn't even bring himself to look at his own reflection. He felt it was an absurdity, a sacrilege that he was alive at all. He turned towards the wolf again, watching as he and Huan kept playfully teasing each other. “He said...he was compelled to serve Moringotto?”

“Yes...he says there are many other such creatures who have fallen victim to Moringotto's savagery.”

Curufin nodded. They knew what Morgoth did to Elves. They knew it all too well, now. It would have been surprising for him to spare animals.

Celegorm risked a quick glance at his brother, glimpsed the worry in his gaze, saw the wrinkles at corners of his eyes and the deep furrows above them, and guessed his train of thought. “...it's been one week. I wonder –...I wonder if he's ever going to wake up.”

“He survived –” Curufin's voice caught on the word, and he had to swallow before he was able to continue. “...he survived so far, he's not going to give up now.”

*

Maedhros woke up three days after Carcharoth had returned the Silmarils. 

Maglor didn't let anybody, apart from the healers, get near his room at first, claiming that Maedhros was in no condition to see anybody. 

The right half of Maedhros's head was hidden under several layers of bandages. His right eye had been nearly cut through, but the healers said that with some luck it would be saved. His right arm, which had been broken, had been set and immobilised by the very orcs who had brought him back. His most severe wounds had been treated before he had been returned, too. 

Maglor should have been happy, but he couldn't bring himself to feel anything resembling relief or happiness. He was, on the contrary, painfully wary.

He couldn't make sense of Maedhros's deliverance. From whatever angle he looked at it, there was no reason why orcs would have willingly brought an elf back to his people. He was afraid it might be a ruse on Morgoth's part, and he dreaded to imagine what could happen if it was. If the emaciated, ravaged creature that was now his brother had been twisted to whatever foul purpose Morgoth intended. He had learnt of several released prisoners who had in time – when they could wreak the most harm – revealed themselves to be nothing more than Morgoth's puppets, and the circumstances of Maedhros's return made the eventuality all the more likely. 

Not even the time he had spent sitting at his brother's bedside had helped him overcome his misgivings, not in full. 

He spent each day in his brother's sickroom, and governed from there, relying on old trusty Gilrínel to relay his orders and take care whatever troubles arose within – or without – their settlement.

The most nagging of them was the question of how to deal with the those very orcs who had brought Maedhros back. Caranthir still pressed to have them killed, tortured to death, counting on the support of many, claiming it would only be fair requital. 

They had all thought Maedhros dead at first, because it had been kinder than to imagine that life could still endure inside that shrivelled husk of skin and bone. It was the most gruesome sight they had ever seen, and after the initial shock, a helpless rage had spread through the whole population. 

Maglor, however, had ordered the orcs to be locked up in a hastily dug out prison by the side of the lake, postponing any discussion of their fate to when Maedhros would wake up.

What they had said up to that point didn't make much sense. They kept blabbering, in their coarse but intelligible Sindarin, about not wanting to hurt the Lord anymore, that they would forever be mortified for having hurt him, that they didn't want to be destroyed by the wrath of the Lord. 

It had taken a while for Maglor to understand that by Lord they meant Maedhros, and the realisation only deepened his bemusement.

And then, to complicate matters even further, there was the return of the Silmarils. Curufin insisted they were the real ones, but Maglor didn't fully trust Curufin's judgement, even if Curufin did seem to be less unbalanced now than immediately after their father's death.

He waited three days before allowing his brothers to visit Maedhros. Caranthir came and went, hiding whatever he felt behind a blank expression. The twins stood at the foot of the bed, staring at the brother who was to them as dear as a second father, in silence at first, then tried to talk to him, in gentle whispers, but without obtaining any particular reaction from Maedhros. 

Gilrínel brought Maglor's summons to Celegorm and Curufin in the courtyard where their workshops were. 

When Celegorm and Curufin arrived to the room where Maedhros had been laid down in the most comfortable bed to be found in the growing settlement built around and inside the lake – a quiet, secluded room – their initial relief, the tentative spark of joy alongside lingering trepidation, foundered again into dismay. Maglor met them at the door and warned them that Maedhros hadn't fully come back to himself yet, but even that didn't prepare them for what they had to face.

Celegorm and Curufin remained standing, hovering on the threshold, while Maglor returned to his usual seat next to the bed. 

“Nelyo –” Celegorm called after a while, taking a couple of steps forwards, carefully gauging Maedhros's reaction.

Maedhros looked like a cornered animal that hasn't yet lost all hope of escape, and is determined to bide his time, waiting for an opening. He quaked at the sound of Celegorm's voice and struggled to prop himself up against the headboard, to better survey his surroundings and the new people in it.

His body hurt all over, but he could move freely, and it had been like that for a while now. There wasn't the burden of chains which became progressively heavier as he weakened, and there wasn't the dreadful downward pull on his right arm, the scrape of the rock on his back when he was swayed by gusts, and the ever rising smoke choking his lungs. It all looked real, and felt real. The bed was soft. It smelled musty, but didn't stink of that nauseating mixture of bodily fluids and mud that made him retch. The air was cool. The people he hazily saw in the room looked like elves, and moved and spoke like elves. Yet he was still afraid. He was afraid it was all a dream, and that at any moment he would wake up in the middle of his ordeal.

Huan, who had followed Celegorm and Curufin, looked at Maedhros with downturned ears, his big round eyes conveying the same consternation as the elves'. Carcharoth, who had grown used to following Huan everywhere, slipped between the brothers and scuttled inside, the pit-pat of his paws resounding clearly in the laden silence of the room over the gentle lapping sound of the water outside.

Maglor's brow furrowed at the sight of the wolf, and he glared reproachingly at Celegorm, but Celegorm, though somewhat worried himself, didn't do anything to stop Carcharoth.

Carcharoth came to stand next to the bed and fixed his mottled amber eyes on Maedhros, whining softly. Then he put his front paws on the bed and stretched his muzzle towards Maedhros.

Maedhros stiffened, and at first tried to recoil as far as possible, in a reflexive impulse.

Carcharoth flattened his ears to his head and lowered it until his damp nose nuzzled Maedhros's chest through the sheet that covered him.

Maedhros squeezed his eye shut, but when he timidly reopened it the wolf's eyes looked at him and they were kind, kindling a tiny, fragile spark of relief in his mind. The bony hand which had clutched the sheets slowly unclenched, and shakily rose to sink in Carcharoth's fur. 

Celegorm's keen eyes saw how he ever so slightly relaxed. 

“Nelyo...what happened?” he tried again, taking two more cautious steps towards the bed.

Maedhros's eye turned to focus on him, but he didn't reply. He didn't seem to have understood the question. 

“You were returned by orcs,” Maglor said, as he had already done multiple times. 

Maedhros remained silent, but his mind trudged through a confused tangle of thoughts. He did remember something. The orcs –...they had said something to him, while they hoisted him up from the rock. He had thought they were taking him back inside. His fingers clawed into Carcharoth's fur. The wolf patiently let him do. There had been a searing pain in his right arm – the mere continuation of past ones – something splashed over his chest, and then –

Then he had passed out, and if he had passed out it meant he could really still be dreaming. He sobbed, but Carcharoth nuzzled his face, and he looked at the wolf again. His white coat appeared luscious in the light of the lamp sitting on the bedside table. Maedhros glanced to his right, as if noticing its brilliance for the first time. There had been no real light in Angband. Not the kind his father's lamps provided, soft but clear. The orcs didn't like light, and the only illumination they tolerated was the glow of sinister fires. It wasn't like that here. There was no smell of burning, not even the faintest whiff of the stench which had clogged his senses. 

“Water,” he rasped. 

Maglor started into motion, relieved – and rejoiced – to hear a voice that sounded truly like Maedhros's. He took the cloth he had used to wet his brother's lips at regular intervals all through his watch, not just with water but with milk and honey too into which very small bits of lembas had been mixed. He dipped it in the water from a carafe. 

Maedhros shuddered as he felt the drops trickle over his lips. There was another flash – of the orcs forcing him to drink a slimy substance that had stung his mouth. But this wasn't the same. It wasn't the same. This was water, real water, and it was good. He let it slide down his throat, and was vivified by it. 

“I-...it was-...” he began, but his voice died in a strangled whimper that made his brothers cringe. “Was-...don't...understand.”

“You are in Mithrim, you were free and brought back to us, your brothers,” Maglor said evenly, enunciating each word as clearly as possible, still clutching the cloth in his right hand.

Maedhros, once again, ignored the words. “Þauron -” the name brought with it a stab of fear, but also unbridled hate, and a keen sense of triumph, “- s... _dead_.”

“Dead? How?” Curufin asked, quickly striding past Celegorm.

Maedhros's lips twitched. 

Celegorm caught up with Curufin, trying to pull him back. “He's...still too weak, leave him be.”

“ _He_...did –”

“Moringotto?” Curufin frowned. “Why would he -”

“I was...sure -” Maedhros stammered. A very long pause followed, but it was clear that Maedhros was frantically searching his own thoughts to say something else. “Sure -...felt-...Father...was there.”

Curufin paled, and unconsciously gripped Celegorm's arm. 

“You _saw_ him?” 

“No -” Maedhros denied, and his voice was firm, “ _felt_.”

Curufin glanced at Maglor, who looked no less confused than Curufin himself was, then reached into the bag tied to his belt, feeling the shape of one of the Silmarils. 

“Nelyo, the Silmarils were returned too.”

Maedhros raised his eye towards him, a flicker of recognition finally sparkled in it.

Curufin let go of Celegorm's arm and pointed at Carcharoth. “The wolf brought them to me. He must have taken them from Morgoth himself.”

He closed his right had around one of the gems, but had only partially pulled it out when there was a knock at the door, and Gilrínel peeked in without waiting for a reply. 

“Sorry to intrude, Lord,” she said addressing Maglor, then turned towards Maedhros, and quickly bowed her head, in mixed deference and distress. “Lord.”

“What is it?” Maglor asked, at once alarmed. He knew Gilrínel would never intrude like that unless something grave had happened.

“It's...” she faltered. No number of carefully chosen words could have made the news less startling than they were. “Ñolofinwë's host,” she forced out. “It has-...been spotted by scouts, entering Hithlum from the Firth of Drengist.” 

The brothers all turned fully towards her, all taken aback. 

“They will be here soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't decided yet whether Fëanor can't communicate with his sons via the Silmarils or if he's just too drained after fighting Morgoth to do it for the moment.
> 
> Gilrínel is my OC friend of Fëanor (Ñillerámë in Quenya).


End file.
